immessedup17 wrote:
I has made it.
It is chilling in the fridge right now...
Ingredients:
1.5 boxes of Prince rigatoni noodles
1 package hard salami (about 20-25 slices), cut into small triangles by yours truly
1 8oz block of mozzarella cheese, cut into cubes by yours truly
3 red normal sized tomatoes, washed and diced by yours truly
2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried basel
2/3 cup italian dressing
Cooked the pasta, about 16 minutes...not al dente because I don't like al dente pasta. That was my first change of the recipe. After cooking, i rinsed it in cold water...cold wet limp noodles are the way to go. While the pasta was cooking, i cut up the salami, mozzarella, and tomatoes. Threw those into a big bowl...put the noodles in and started mixing it all up. Tossing the salad, if you will. After that was mixed up fairly well, i threw in the italian dressing. Mixed it up some more. Finally I put in the oregano and basel...mixed it up some more...and then i put in the parmesan cheese...and i mixed it some more. My right arm muscles haven't been worked this hard since high school...
Pictures coming as soon as my camera battery recharges, it was dead. Nic and his girlfriend will be two test subjects later...I will give you my taste review...and tell him to give one as well.
So I can cook you fucktards.
1) The part you cooked is the part you fucked up. 16 minutes is way, way too long. Assuming you mean you let the water boil then put the pasta in after that point, even if you don't like al dente, you want to go closer to around 10 minutes. You can cook this less, and the pasta will soak in some of the italian dressing and make it taste a lot better!
2) You rinsed off all the good stuff that the pasta uses to bind the sauce to the pasta. If you would have left it warm, mixed it up, and then thrown it into the refrigerator, you would have better tasting results... that combined with the #1 tip would make it less soupy and more pasta-y.
3) Use shredded parm in a dish like this. You need it for the parm flavor to pop (and yes you should have used San Marzanos and a better salami.)
4) Why is it OK to buy a cheaper precut salami as opposed to the real kind, but you feel the need to manually cube your mozzarella? Go all cheap or all quality -- don't get stuck in between.
5) Your arm is tired because you mixed much more than you needed to. You can throw all that crap in at once and mix it. Maybe the powdered parm should have gone in first with the slippery noodles in an attempt to get that to bind to the noodle, but other than that, I don't see any reason you couldn't have just done this all in one fell swoop.
6) From your picture, this is something I would be taking nibbles of every time I opened the fridge. Looks like you did take the time for your cutting parts to do a good job breaking that down. Next time I recommend using a tri-color rotini. Great for pasta salads because it has more surface area to adhere to, and the assortment of colors makes it more appealing to eat. And use more tomato... not enough in there.
7) It's spelled with an i, not an e.